Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/643722
CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE S ome of the tracks that hosted AMA National Road Races over the years were pretty crazy. You had the city park in Windber, Pennsyl- vania, with a glorified walking path that snaked through the woods, riders practically rub- bing their elbows on tree bark. There were the tracks that were basically drag strips with a return road like Dallas Inter- national Motor Speedway and the crazy little D-shape "road course" at Heidelberg Race- way in Pennsylvania. Most of those types of road race tracks had been weeded out by the 1970s, but in the mid- '90s riders in the AMA Superbike Championship and its support classes were seemingly thrown back in time when they found themselves racing on an improvised parking lot road course going around the grounds of the Fairplex in Pomona, California. The controversial road race at Pomona, dubbed the L.A. Superbike Championship, somehow lasted for three years (1994-1996) in spite of early vigorous protests by riders. The fans loved it though. They got a chance to see superbikes from ultra-close vantage points and then there was the adventure of trying to avoid a sliding motorcycles coming right at you as they punched their way under a chain-link fences (the only thing separat- ing fans from the track in some places). Despite the hullabaloo, the track actually pro- duced some good racing and surprising results along the way. When riders first saw the track, shit hit the fan. Former AMA and World Superbike Champion Fred Merkel organized a rider meeting and comman- deered a portable building being used as a classroom for a rider's school being conducted by David Al- dana. The diagrams on the school's marker board were erased and the pro racers began listing demands they would present to the AMA and race promoters. The initial list was to remove pedestrian bridges, substantially increasing haybales and repaving the course. There was no way these demands could be met and the riders figured if they stuck together the race would simply be canceled. When the first practice session was called no riders came out. The next class was called and the same thing and so it went through the entire schedule. Fans and officials were stunned. Not a single rider had broken ranks. And unlike in events in past years the AMA officials didn't threaten or even try to persuade the racers. It was later learned that in the riders-only meeting it was implied by some of the leaders, that if any rider broke ranks they could expect to be punted off the track during the weekend or the next race meeting. At lunch a meeting was held and officials promised that pedestrian bridges would be gone the next day and with that some riders began practicing in the afternoon sessions. Saturday morning the riders showed up and the bridges were gone. Practice commenced after morning rain. After P96 T H E P O M O N A S U P E R B I K E PA R K I N G L O T R A C E S